Re: cursor MOVE vs OFFSET in SELECT - Mailing list pgsql-general

Suppose that you have a query, say $sql_query, which is very
complicated and produces many rows. Which of the following is going to
be faser:

   $sql_query OFFSET 3000 LIMIT 12;

or

   BEGIN;
   DECLARE cur1 CURSOR FOR $sql_query;
   MOVE 3000 IN cur1;
   FETCH 12 FROM cur1;
   COMMIT;

Naturally, the former cannot be slower than the latter. So my question
essentially is whether the MOVE operation on a cursor is
(significantly) slower that a OFFSET on the SELECT.